Diversity & Inclusion

Company-Wide Process to Advance Diversity and Inclusion

The subject of diversity and inclusion was identified as a major element in the human capital management processes of Strauss Group. Employing groups from different sectors backgrounds and with different characteristics, and providing equal opportunity, creates a competitive long-term advantage for our business, in our view, as well as for the communities in which we operate.

We see diversity and inclusion as a key ingredient of our business success, especially in these times when there are expectations of companies to operate with greater responsibility, transparency and connection to the local community and the environment. Diversity and inclusion contribute to creating a better company, makes us more like the diverse consumers we serve and therefore bring us closer to them. This enables us to be in a stronger position to attract and retain talent, and also serve as a platform for innovation and creativity. When different people share their different life experiences, they create innovative processes and solve problems in new and creative ways.

In addition, diversity is a central theme in our identity and activity at Strauss Group. Diversity and inclusion reflect our values and our aspiration to nurture an environment in which every person has the right to be heard and to realize his or her potential.

We are diverse in our brands:

We offer our consumers more than 30 brands in several categories.

We have diverse consumers:

Strauss operates in 23 countries on five continents. As a global company whose operations affect many communities, we stand by our commitment to healthy, quality products that are tailored to the needs of these different communities.

We have diverse employees:

We act to reinforce employee diversity within the Strauss Group and the inclusion of employees of various backgrounds. We encourage good interpersonal relationships among our colleagues from different cultures.

We are diverse in our community investment programs:

Our community investment strategy focuses on the advancement of diversity and inclusion through the support of organizations that promote a range of population groups and assist in their integration into society, employment, and education.

Strauss Israel has advanced processes to identify diverse candidates and enable their integration in the job market in line with focused definitions of diversity:

Selection and Recruitment Processes which Advance Diversity and Inclusion at Strauss

Mapping opportunities for effective recruitment in different professional roles: The roles in which we can integrate diverse groups were mapped according to the market and organizational possibilities and we identified the geographical areas in which there are high levels of diverse groups from whom we could recruit, and recruitment targets were updated accordingly.

Promotion to senior management: We created an entry point into the organization from which managers can advance to more senior management roles.

Women in senior management roles: We identified roles which serve as a platform to advance women to CEO roles and increased the rate of women appointed to these roles.

Creation of a dedicated recruitment process: This includes partnerships with Employment Agencies which have expertise in recruiting diverse groups.

Increase in the number of diverse candidates in Strauss Israel: Strauss Israel advances strategic collaboration with non-profit organizations which assist in identifying diverse candidates from diverse backgrounds: Ethiopian, Arab and Orthodox. During the recruitment process for management candidates, Strauss Israel invests special efforts to identify candidates with an academic background from the Arab population, Ethiopian immigrants and women for roles in management.

Ensuring appropriate assessment skills for recruiters: Strauss creates different assessment programs which are tailored for the diverse groups of candidates applying for roles at Strauss and has created a new pilot program in this field. For example, we have all our recruiters have undergone training delivered by professionals and supported by non-profit associations who have expertise in working with diverse people. Sessions are held for sharing the learning from the recruitment experiences on a regular basis.

Improvement in the preparedness of managers to recruit diverse candidates: The Human Resources function works on an individual basis with managers in the organization and operates with professional non-profit associations to remove barriers to diverse recruitment and enable effective induction of more diverse employees.

Induction Processes

Strauss Israel advances several processes to improve the induction process of diverse new hires in different roles:

Personal and professional support for new hires, and also for their managers, which focuses on understanding cultural gaps.

Cross-cultural workshops.

Framework for monitoring and management of new hires in a process in collaboration with the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

Accessibility: In Strauss Israel, there is a personal responsible for accessibility who ensures all measures are taken to ensure full accessibility for all employees. This includes including accessibility considerations in warehouse and logistics planning in Shoham, our central warehouse, refurbishing our Visitors’ Center in Achiyud with the help of a professional accessibility expert, including accessibility considerations in the process of building new offices for Strauss Water in Petach Tikvah, Israel and more. In Elite coffee in Petach Tikvah, special parking lots were allocated to people with disabilities and access routes to the café are maintained.

Work, family and free-time balance: In Strauss Israel and in Max Brenner Israel, we enable employees to work from home in a flexible hours framework. In Strauss Israel, we enable employees to return from parental leave on a gradual basis and we offer the possibility of a part-time role with one day a week designated for going home early with no late meetings, families of employees are invited to company vacations, and Strauss Group encourages its employees to take vacation through office and plant closures at national holiday times. Strauss is in the process of developing a formal policy with regard to work-life balance. Also in our subsidiary companies there is a practice of flexible home-working, such as in Strauss coffee in Poland which enables home working and gradual return from parental leave.

We understand that a culture of diversity and inclusion is not achieved with ease, and therefore decided to embed this subject both internally, in the way we recruit and manage human capital in the organization, and externally, in the way we support the communities and local environment of which we are a part.

At a Group level, we have chosen to focus on gender diversity, as women make most of the household purchase decisions and are a significant group of consumers for Strauss. Their integration and empowerment in Strauss Group makes us more relevant to women consumers.

Employee Ages

In Strauss Group, employees of all ages are represented. The largest age group is up to age 30 which is 36% of total employees.